


The song of the pool beneath the stars

by Zimraphel



Series: An anti-Athrabeth [4]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, F/M, Gen, Im so sorry dudes. This is a poem., Other, Written without regard for form on top of that., what of it, yes i felt it necessary to name the lake as a character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimraphel/pseuds/Zimraphel
Summary: And they stood beside dark water full of Song and stars.
Relationships: Aegnor | Ambaráto/Andreth | Saelind
Series: An anti-Athrabeth [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042980
Kudos: 5





	The song of the pool beneath the stars

**Author's Note:**

> ' But the waters of Tarn Aeluin were held in reverence, for they were clear and blue by day and by night were a mirror for the stars; and it was said that Melian herself had hallowed that water in the days of old.' 
> 
> The lake remembers its awakening by Melian, and dreams of what came after.

**The song of the pool beneath the stars**

My first reflection was of nightingales and starlight  
I was shy still, my mirror green with duckweed  
and no birds to eat it, all still sleeping in the dark  
as she cleared it with her shining hands  
singing a song of being, of remembering the Song.  
  
I was young then, new-formed  
my uncouth thoughts of rain and stone  
No memory of longing frogsong  
or sweltering cicada-filled summers  
warmed then cold furrowed depths.  
  
Dark, silvery, and green.  
Embers of stars there must have been;  
but I don’t remember any now.  
None that would then come to me  
cast lasting reflection into my deeps.  
only dark roots drinking, deepening  
what songs shadows found there must sing  
whispering of far-away fires as they drained  
and dark taproot tendrils stirred wild mud  
  
But I now was stilled by gentle hands  
that sung to me of growing smooth  
reflective, still—of staying so the world could see  
to be the eye of the high mountain, opening slowly  
with the flowers to the light.  
  
and so learned, after so many a century  
the joy of holding starlight stilled in my deeps  
Oh yes, how I was silver-shot!  
with many a sliver of the moon  
And at last not even dread winter  
could with his cold breath  
stir movement  
from my starred lakebed.

-

Long afterwards when I had lain deaf and mute  
blinded shining beneath the newborn sun  
\--someone looked again, and it was night again,  
her hair dark as the eyes of nightingales--  
though wholly without stars;  
and nothing here was singing.

Nothing about her shone; she seemed so frail a thing,  
unreflected and afraid; alone.  
It was dark, and so silent; as a finger came down  
to touch its twin, trembling more than ember-stars  
scattered on once-young waves, long since stilled--  
now stirred by a single sigh, ruffling star-domed sky;  
she stayed so long; I think she cried.  
She taught me tears  
and the taste of Sea-away.  
  
(I didn’t mind—and dreamed of gulls,  
learned to long for things I never knew)  
  
At last looked up from my new scattering  
with eyes her own, yet deepening  
and undulating into her hair, casting there;  
all the stars she could not hold,  
all my memory of moons  
yes I held her faithful sight; but silvering,  
cold and dark, yet full of light  
and memory of Song.

-

One day, she did not come,  
and then came not again.  
Until brown leaves drew a coverlet  
over dulled stars in my lakebed.  
  
For a long time, the straying roe-deer  
alone disturbed, with dark eyes full of fear.  
lost forever to the swift-footed hunter,  
when she stumbled into the deep  
where I wound my darkening mud to keep  
her near to me, in lasting Sleep. 

-  
  
When at last she came again, it was with someone like the Sun,  
with strange fey stars lost in his eyes,  
their reflections still unknown to me—  
a Light I did not know how to keep.  
  
A trembling hand strayed into her shadowed hair, hid there.  
and seemed at first like a swallow to make its nest--  
yet rarely –if ever- truly seemed at rest,  
still Southward-bound, remembering greater Seas.  
And always again his eyes were cast into my pool,  
of deep blue incomparable, impossible to forget,  
coloring starless day-skies with deeper regrets.  
  
And at night my faithful reflection seemed to become  
instead of a comfort, a horrible wrong!  
The arms with which I mirrored her, still asking for a dance  
now signed of something strange  
between  
my little shadow and her Sun--  
\-- oh, I made some waves to match her sighs  
but soon found I could not chase stars from reflected eyes.  
  
Often still she would come alone,  
sometimes long dancing toe-to-toe,  
bent low towards her reflected face,  
seeming to search with that deep gaze  
For something I could not hold.

Often, I feared she would bend too deep  
and found I did not wish for her to keep  
my roe-deer company, reigning in its calls.  
But tracing long waterlily lines, she stayed by me  
and it was from her I learned to speak  
of kings, and duty  
of stern cold law.

I whispered them back to her with many-tongued reeds  
to which she remained dumb, but seemed to heed  
and cried for days at end.  
  
But still I preferred her soft hand to any root  
and held myself up, for all her days,  
like a smoothened mirror to her sky;  
wishing my reflected stars to shone more strangely  
as bright and fell as across the wide, wild Sea.  
  
-

That girl is long gone; and so am I  
who learned to dance again, and hold more than sky  
  
All that remains of us is a fragment of Song  
faltering, fading, heard soon by none.  
  
First whispered in my reeds when the Sea  
came down to flood the sweetness of my keep  
soon silenced by greater Melodies.

-

  
(far above a new river flows; beneath the earth,  
the layers grow  
of song upon song upon Song.  
  
  
But whenever long taproot reaches down too deep  
I call out from my starless sleep!  
for her whose sorrow taught me how to speak  
and sing through many mouths  
now thick with sand, and set with gravel  
never reaching sun or sky, or Sea  
Ever pressed down by Time, into the Deep).

-  
  
Oh starless Andreth, shadow of Song,  
old Time should not move so smoothly along   
and leave no trace, allow no change of Part  
for stumbling deer, for faithful hearts.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> water holds the echo of the Music, even if the song has been forgotten, and the river runs dry.


End file.
